EA Brags About 30 Mil Origin Users

EA’s scheme to compete with Valve appears to be working. According to the publisher, 30 million people have registered for Origin. That news was revealed at last Tuesday’s quarterly investor call, and coming so soon after Medal of Honor: Warfighter flopped, that was a nice bit of good news to go along with the bad. According to EA’s Peter Moore, nearly half of all registrations came from Mobile users, and for now that, along with PC, is where the company intends to focus. “Origin continues to be a PC-centric service,” he said, “one that’s moving quickly to mobile, but as things evolve in the coming years we’ll look at where the demand is. But at the moment Origin is very much PC centric and mobile centric.”

Naturally, I am skeptical any time EA claims to have done anything ‘PC centric’. But at least it appears they’re trying. Trying to look like they’re doing something in the PC space, I mean. I can’t speak to the actual output, which has been a very mixed bag. Next year is put up or shut up time, with EA’s first big PC-only title, the newly rebooted SimCity, dropping during the first 3 months of 2013. With it flop? It might, since you can’t mod it and there’s no single player experience, two things real SimCity fans consider essential; people who don’t normally buy such games are going to have to pick up SimCity in droves to make up for those who might not. And if it does, so too might EA’s interest in expanding Origin as a PC service.

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I’d probably be slightly impressed if not for how new EA games on PC require you to use Origin. You can’t jump through the DRM hoops without it, and when I tried to play ME3 without logging in, it blocked the DLC. When your choices are signing up or not playing, it isn’t much of a choice. EA may act like Origin is this amazing service, but right now it is an inferior version of Steam that is forced on players.

Roy Batty

On November 4, 2012 at 9:50 pm

What I don’t understand is: does EA realize they have this nasty thuggish reputation and if so why doesn’t the board hire a CEO to mend fences or at least is someone who is passionate about the game business? I don’t understand how anybody could invest in this company when its customers hate it so much and when EA seems to hate its customers. It is bizarre, like having a party hit you in the small of your back.

SweetPea

On November 4, 2012 at 10:07 pm

The difference is: Steam users actually use their steam accounts, while most Origin users just created one for a game and forgot about it forever. Same with Games for Windows Live, oh if I knew how many accounts I registered for that piece of

As a PC gamer of some 22 years, I can proudly say I’m not one of the people signing up for Origin. Whether it’s forced on me or not. No one can force me to buy something I don’t want to, and what I don’t want is everything produced by EA. They’re a bad company, which makes bad products. Now on to one of my many, many Steam or GOG games… ah I love ‘em

@Roy People invest in EA because they don’t care what customers think about it, or how EA feels about customers. All investors are looking at is Return on Investment. As long as EA maintains a healthy ROI for shareholders, they’ll be happy to pony up the cash regardless of how we as gamers may perceive the company.

I understand this but what puzzles me is why EA does not even attempt to bandage its reputation. I have seen some strange things like: a sign in a junkyard “customers will be charged based on their attitude”. I have even seen where someone was trying to rent a car and the agent refused him because this customer had previously treated the rental agency staff like sh!t. For a company as large as EA you would think they would at least try to maintain a better reputation in the business.

I work for a megalithic company that has an entire department that devotes it’s daily time to making the megalith less megalithic and it is actually effective. Why invest in something that has scandal after scandal (buy on rumor sell on fact)? The news/scandals disrupt the investment cycle making profits less predictable and thus investment less likely. It seems like they could do better if they put a forth a little effort.

Hummm in one way I suppose this might be predictable. When EA buys a studio in total you can expect a degradation in quality output within 2 years and thus you can short the stock.

Electronic Farts

On November 5, 2012 at 7:48 am

Please, please let EA go to the wall with this one.

Nero576

On November 5, 2012 at 8:24 am

The only reason Origin has so many users is because of all the poor people that had to make an account to play Battlefield 3 online.

@Roy – I don’t disagree. I do think that many investors just look at returns, and don’t bother to familiarize themselves with a company before investing. Oh, EA has a great bottom line for the last 10 years and consistent returns? I’ll take it.

James

On November 6, 2012 at 2:37 pm

I registered for Origin to claim my free copy of ME2 back when it was released. It was only on my computer for 3 hours. I assume they still counted that account among the 30 million.

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